Lisbon (3 page)

As indeed she had. The thought no longer brought a blush to Charlotte’s cheeks, for theirs was a marriage not made in heaven, but, she sometimes thought, designed in hell.

Still, they had endured together thus far—couples of their class seldom divorced—even though Rowan could not help knowing that she had never loved him, and he had found mistresses, so many of them, for gossip about his wild and wastrel ways in London had a way of reaching even into far-off Cumberland. Charlotte had turned a deaf ear. She was never completely comfortable in Rowan’s presence, so it was good to have him away from her, although she was always careful to mask her feelings and to play the devoted wife whenever he returned.

The salt air that blew from the Atlantic up the mouth of the Tagus River rippled Charlotte’s blonde hair—that golden 
hair in which Rowan had seemed to take such delight early in their marriage, never allowing her to cut so much as a wisp of it. Now she brushed it back away from her face with an expensive embroidered peach kid glove, for Rowan, although he neglected her, lavished money unstintingly on her wardrobe.

Concentrating on keeping her footing on this dim narrow balconied street, so steep it seemed to be made up mainly of steps that wound down through the Alfama toward the waterfront, Charlotte puzzled, trying to sort it all out.

Why had Rowan’s lovemaking, which had been careless and desultory in this last year before their departure from England, almost condescending at times, suddenly become so fierce? That first night in Lisbon he had taken her in his arms as if he would destroy her, bombarding her with a passion that left her weak and bruised and shaken.

On the ship he had not been like that. Their embarkation had wrought a marvelous change in him. He had seemed lighthearted, as if some great weight had been lifted from his shoulders. And his lovemaking had again been tender and considerate.

When they were at last settled into their house in the Portas del Sol, his lovemaking had become totally unpredictable—a tender lover one night, a bruising brute the next. It was not love, and certainly not affection that drove Rowan, but something else, something that made him cry out in his sleep, angry indistinguishable words that degenerated into restless muttering. Something sinister. And now she felt that something like a prickling in her spine as she held up her skirts to avoid a heavy flowerpot.

It was that prickling of dread that had driven her out in the dawn to think.

Now, in the tortuous twisting of the narrow alleyway, a cat, one of the typical striped tabbies that abounded in Lisbon, darted beneath Charlotte’s feet and dashed away with a yowl as she gave a lurch to avoid stepping on it. Now it crouched on the stone steps nearby, looking up at her, its knowing green eyes in its long pointed face flickerin
g in the torchlight. From a distance came the screeching sound of caterwauling cats making love and perhaps war, and the striped tabby sat up alertly.

‘Puss,” murmured Charlotte ruefully, “I hope
your
lover doesn’t treat you like that.”

As if finding the sound unbearable, the cat plunged down the steps and then began to walk more decorously, swishing its tail. Charlotte watched it.

Who knew what the cat had been through the night before? Maybe, like her, the cat needed to get away and try to puzzle out life. Certainly
she
had needed to get away this morning, to clear her head, for her body was still aching from Rowan s punishing style of lovemaking of the night before.

She passed a stone fountain tiled in blue-and-white
azulejos
depicting garden scenes. Beside it two heavyset women—stolid early risers in the pale Portuguese dawn— were filling water jugs. Half-dressed ragged children tugged at their skirts, and cats sidled around them, rubbing against their substantial legs. Charlotte was tempted to sit on the edge of the fountain and view this little panorama of life in an exotic city.

But she decided against it. His torch extinguished now in daylight, Vasco still lounged along behind her, though walking now at a respectful distance. Suppose he took it upon himself to clear these people away for the wealthy 
senhora
? She could not chance it, she decided ruefully, and moved on toward the busy waterfront.

Ah, this was just what she needed—a brisk uncaring crowd and healthy pandemonium. Around her in the fish market, weathered-looking fishermen were selling their catch to the olive-skinned
varinas
, the fishwives who would pile them in big flat baskets and hawk them lustily throughout the awakening city. How their wide black skirts swished over the cobbles, what brilliant smiles they flashed at their customers as the gold loops bobbed in their ears and the dripping fish they carried in those flat baskets on their heads trickled down to splash on a golden necklace or a cross worn between ample breasts. Here among the
varinas 
and the men in their cross-stitched red shirts, unnoticed 
in the hubbub, she would try to face her problems and understand at last why her husband made love to her as if he were scourging her.

From the waterfront fish market as she wandered through it, the water glistened and white-winged gulls were turned to pink or lavender in the early-morning sky. Myriad craft were moored in the harbor—rakish red and brown fishing smacks, beautiful barges with lateen sails, called every kind of sailing ship seemed to be represented. One big potbellied merchantman caught her eye, for it flew the English flag. The ship’s passengers were just then disembarking, and a wave of homesickness drew Charlotte toward them.

Suddenly in that crowd she was startled to see a familiar face—a man’s face, a strong face, bronzed and weathered, with hair so blond it gleamed Viking-white in the pale breaking sunlight. The face was gone almost before she glimpsed it, lost in a sea of disembarking passengers, but the momentary sight of it had caused her heart to lurch violently in her chest. For that was a face she had thought never to see again this side of paradise. And just that one brief glimpse of it had sent her blood racing to old wild rhythms and sent a hope akin to panic skittering throughout her woman’s body.

For the man she had just glimpsed—and surely she must be mistaken, for he was long dead—had meant more to Charlotte Vayle than anyone else in this world. Her love for him was deep and tormenting and had haunted her to this day. Indeed, just the sight of a man who only 
looked
like him brought back to tantalizing life the memory of green eyes that had smiled into hers, of longfingered hands that had caressed her, of lips that had melted tenderly against her own.

It was—no, it couldn’t possibly be Tom Westing!

But even in her disbelief, Charlotte found herself running mindlessly forward, for she must know,
she must know.

Blindly she bumped into a cart and barked her shins. She scarcely noticed the pain. A black-skirted
varina
carr
ying a load of fish in a basket on her head swore at her as she stumbled away from the cart, fighting her way toward the disembarking passengers.

For the sight of the blond stranger—and stranger he must certainly be—had brought back to Charlotte a vivid searing past that she had tried so desperately to forget. She was swept into a maelstrom of memory of a love that had had its tender beginnings among the crags and lakes of Cumberland just below the Scottish border and had flared into disaster in the golden summer of 1732.

Charlotte Vayle would never in her life forget the moment she had first laid eyes on Tom Westing. It had actually been, she later supposed in retrospect, the day she had first realized what it could really be like between a man and a woman, the day she had first given serious thought to having a man s warm arms enfold her naked body and let his fervor transport her to another world and joys undreamt of. . . . But that was later. At the time, her girlish embarrassment had known no bounds.

Charlotte was fifteen—a thin and gangling fifteen with wide expressive eyes that seemed too large for her delicate heart-shaped face. She and Wend, the new serving girl (a feckless time-waster, according to Cook), had strayed from the kitchen and gone idly looking for birds’ nests. They were walking barefoot (to save their worn shoes) over warm stones and soft grasses, making their way down from Friar s Crag, a low wooded promontory that rose above the eastern shore of the glistening expanse of that ancient glacial lake men called the Derwent Water. And Wend had been telling Charlotte how at home—waving vaguely toward the countryside in the direction of the Greta— they always hung withered birch twigs over the door to keep out witches.

Although she had been brought up among the dolmens 
and standing stones of the far-off Scillies, Charlotte had no real belief in witches, and had laughed.

‘Are you troubled with so many then?” she asked.

And Wend, who was two years older, big-boned and surefooted, had turned with a sniff. “You never know what lies in store,” she warned. “That’s what my ma always says!”

That had certainly been true of her own life thus far,
Charlotte had felt like saying.
If she had known back in the Scillies what waited for her in the north of England, she would have wept!
Watching Wend's browned muscular bare legs move out ahead, Charlotte could not help thinking whimsically that from the condition of their clothes, none would have guessed that Charlotte was ostensibly the mistress and Wend the maid. On the whole, red-haired Wend was the better-dressed, for Charlotte, childishly small for her age when she had first come to Cumberland three years before, had shot up like a weed this past year and her present clothing, for all its good linen cloth and fine stitching, was much let out and had long since gone threadbare. The contrast was painful, for Wend’s cheap petticoat beneath her tucked-up skirt was of a flaunting red color and practically new (bought with her first wages), while Charlotte’s ragged skirts, once sky-blue above her mended white petticoat, had faded from many washings down to an indeterminate bluish gray.

Here at the roof of England, where long-forgotten volcanoes slumbered, their hard green slates scarred by frost and ice, was the great central massif of the Lake District, rising majestically just south of the pleasant Vale of Carlisle. Around the silvery waters of the lake the tops of cathedrallike mountains disappeared mysteriously into the mist on this day of drifting clouds that made a shifting pattern of shadows across the storied hills. It was a magical day and there was a kind of solemn stillness about it, as if all the world were waiting for some great message to roll sonorously down from the peaks.

Both girls felt it, a vibrant waiting hush that had settled over the silvery lake and all its surroundings. They had started out laughing and lighthearted, but the hush of this 
summer's afternoon had stilled their voices, and now they found themselves almost tiptoeing through the trees.

“Why don’t we visit Fox Elve?” suggested Wend, who had a wayward sense of humor that went well with her liery hair. Perhaps the ghost of the Viking Lord will rise up and snatch at our ankles!’’

Charlotte, immersed in the haunting unreal somnolence of the countryside, nodded and followed Wend down the steep path that led to the tiny isolated hollow known as Fox Elve. Everyone around there knew the legend of the Viking Lord who on some long-ago raid had been left for dead by his men when their dragon ship had departed for distant fjords. A local girl had found him, so the story went, and had nursed him back to health there by the spring at Fox Elve. But this was no ordinary girl. Her hair sprang pure gold from her head and she rode a white horse and carried a long magic sword that she could wield as well as a man. Perhaps she pitied him, this Golden Maiden. Anyway she gave him back his life there by the spring at Fox Elve. And when he was well again she kissed him on the lips and bade him depart back to the deep fjords of the north from whence he came.

But the Viking Lord had lain in her arms and felt her witchery, and he refused to go—unless she accompanied him. “Why can you not go with me?” he had demanded.

The Maiden, who was strong and beautiful, had stuck the point of her long two-edged sword into the ground and leant upon the hilt. She had looked down at him sadly from her blue eyes.

“Because twas I who brought you down,” she told him simply, “although in the heat of battle perhaps you did not know that it was I. And because you were the trophy of my own blade, none interfered when I chose to give you back your life. But if I left this place with you, we would be pursued, for I and my Magic Sword are Luck Bringers to Battles and I am considered a great prize in my village. Besides, I am promised to our chieftain. He would never let me go. He would bring a war party charging after us and they would bring you down. ”